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Hackett in for Long Haul


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5 minutes ago, silvrsvt said:

 

I mean with recalls and other issues...I've seen about a half dozen of them on the road since they launched. The new Explorer is very popular in my area too. 

 

Hard to tell if the Explorer and Aviator issues were engineering related or just due to the plant retooling and hurried launch.  I hope it's the latter.  And yes, good news on Escape.  Also good that Escape is debuting now so any issues hopefully get resolved before baby bronco launch and all the other new C2 vehicles.

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34 minutes ago, akirby said:

 

Hard to tell if the Explorer and Aviator issues were engineering related or just due to the plant retooling and hurried launch.  I hope it's the latter.  And yes, good news on Escape.  Also good that Escape is debuting now so any issues hopefully get resolved before baby bronco launch and all the other new C2 vehicles.

 

Ford needs to work on exterior panel fit...the first Explorers and Aviators at our local dealer were pretty bad in that department. The new ones seem better, but at the prices Ford is asking - particularly for the Aviator - it needs to more than "good."  
 

The Escape and Corsair appear to be better in this regard right out of the gate, although one new Corsair at our local dealer had a nasty dent and paint chip right below the window of the back hatch.

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43 minutes ago, silvrsvt said:

 

I mean with recalls and other issues...I've seen about a half dozen of them on the road since they launched. The new Explorer is very popular in my area too. 

 

This also jives with what I hear from on the Lincoln side of things. A Lincoln brand champion I know reports that Corsairs are moving now in volume and she reports no issues at all with any of them, unlike the rocky start with the Aviators.

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11 minutes ago, grbeck said:

 

Ford needs to work on exterior panel fit...the first Explorers and Aviators at our local dealer were pretty bad in that department. The new ones seem better, but at the prices Ford is asking - particularly for the Aviator - it needs to more than "good."  

 

I wonder how much of that can be controlled by engineering and how much just has to be done by the workers?  I know for interior pieces they can be engineered so they only fit one way and there is no way the assembly line workers can mess that up.  Not sure if that applies to exterior pieces or not?

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12 minutes ago, akirby said:

 

I wonder how much of that can be controlled by engineering and how much just has to be done by the workers?  I know for interior pieces they can be engineered so they only fit one way and there is no way the assembly line workers can mess that up.  Not sure if that applies to exterior pieces or not?

 

I remember one of the workers on this site saying that Ford has machines that utilize lasers to ensure better exterior panel fit. One would think Ford would use such machines on these vehicles.

 

The new Explorer and Aviator - along with the Corsair - look great in real life. That's why it's frustrating to see these annoying little issues.

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4 minutes ago, grbeck said:

 

I remember one of the workers on this site saying that Ford has machines that utilize lasers to ensure better exterior panel fit. One would think Ford would use such machines on these vehicles.

 

The new Explorer and Aviator - along with the Corsair - look great in real life. That's why it's frustrating to see these annoying little issues.

 

Weren't they shut off at some point to make production numbers too?

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2 hours ago, silvrsvt said:

 

Weren't they shut off at some point to make production numbers too?

 

I don't know about the 2020 Explorer and Aviator, but I remember a poster who worked on the line saying that they had been shut off when production of the last-generation Focus started. This could have been done when production of the Explorer and Aviator began.

 

The newest arrivals at our local dealer are a considerable improvement over the first ones.

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7 hours ago, sullynd said:

Early 2015 Edges flooded because they missed installing a sealer. 
 

https://www.autonews.com/article/20150714/OEM01/150719931/ford-stops-sales-of-some-2015-edges-for-water-leak

 

The Mid 2000s seemed better - first gen Fusion, 500, and Mustang all seemed like pretty trouble free launches (and came after Focus and Escape launch fiascos)

 

You get what you manage for.

 

In the wake of the disastrous Escape/Focus launches, Ford promoted Jim Padilla, who was something of a stick-in-the-mud when it came to new product designs, but was also fanatically committed to quality. One of his stock lines was, 'The customer sees the problem. Why can't you see the problem?'

 

After he retired, the company relaxed that focus, and the first hiccups were the Focus and Fiesta launches, not the CD4 Fusion.

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3 hours ago, akirby said:

 

I wonder how much of that can be controlled by engineering and how much just has to be done by the workers?  I know for interior pieces they can be engineered so they only fit one way and there is no way the assembly line workers can mess that up.  Not sure if that applies to exterior pieces or not?

 

Also: Is there a difference between panel gaps attributable to assembly errors and panel gaps attributable to poor calibration in the largely automated body shop? Thinking of your typical vehicle, I think the only panels attached by factory workers are the doors, front fenders, bumpers and hood. And I guess the fuel door if you want to count that. Pretty much every other piece is, AFAIK, attached by robots.

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Welcome back Richard,

I recall fuzzy remarking about ford outsourcing some stamping and  there being problems with alignment/ gaps. So perhaps the points of error are increasing due to those savings...

 

sorry issues with autocorrect on my phone 

Edited by jpd80
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19 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Welcome back Richard,

I recall fuzzy remarking about ford outsourcing some stamping and  there being problems with alignment/ gaps. So perhaps the points of error are increasing due to those savings...

 

sorry issues with autocorrect on my phone 

 

A lot of those issues as it pertains to what I was aware of were fixed a long time ago. 

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23 minutes ago, RichardJensen said:

 

Also: Is there a difference between panel gaps attributable to assembly errors and panel gaps attributable to poor calibration in the largely automated body shop? Thinking of your typical vehicle, I think the only panels attached by factory workers are the doors, front fenders, bumpers and hood. And I guess the fuel door if you want to count that. Pretty much every other piece is, AFAIK, attached by robots.

 

If they're placed by Robots then calibration and precision would be at fault for sure.  All of the gaps are around those pieces - between the hood and fenders, hood and front bumper, fenders and front doors, front and rear doors, rear doors to quarter panel and trunk to quarter panel and rear bumper.

 

I can understand dialing in the equipment on brand new models and brand new equipment, but we've been seeing that problem on older models for years now.

 

Seems to me that if the chassis and subframe are constructed with precision and the stampings are also of good precision then they could be fit together with no wiggle room.  But I suspect none of those are precise enough to do that so they have to be adjusted somehow on the line.

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Maybe there’s minute adjustments needed as “drifts” in tolerance occurs an if Ford is trying to ramp up too quickly, then maybe they weren’t catching and fixing those out of spec occurrences as quickly as they should 

 

and thanks Fuzzy, glad to hear that supplier issue was corrected 

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The Explorer and Aviator's problems are multi-faceted, but re-engineering the entire plant mid-stream certainly contributes to the disastrous on-the-fly problem solving they were doing while trying to minimize disruption to the Explorer's inventory.  It was really the perfect storm and I kinda saw it coming a mile away, but I was hoping Ford had cracked it.  Ford is so damn predictable once you know them.  It also doesn't help that Explorer and Aviator were launching simultaneously with countless new systems and technologies that basically created a ton of fires to put out when they least needed the complications.  It was overly ambitious and aggressive for a company that has long struggled to iron out their launch process.  But as always, Ford solves the problems eventually even if they seem to forget their history (or disregard it).  But if you want to be first in-line, you're just asking for trouble.  

 

On the other hand, Escape and Corsair are shockingly trouble free so far.  Admittedly this is a MUCH less complicated new car launch than all the factory-gutting launches they have been doing recently.  But like Explorer, this is the only Escape plant so there isn't much room to slowly stage a launch.  The fact that this launch seems so trouble free is just awesome.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of the problems show up eventually in the product through recalls, but so far I'm not hearing about huge batches of faulty cars ending up in Ford's corporate fleet or stacking up to be fixed.  This could be the first smooth Escape launch. 

 

The moral of the story, manufacturing engineering is super hard.  

 

 

Edited by Assimilator
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21 minutes ago, bzcat said:

I bet lots of tooling and workstation setup didn't even need to change at Louisville going from C1 to C2.

Exactly

This is not an all new design but a clever evolution of Escape/Kuga to move it in the right direction. The work on C2 was done by Ford Europe and aimed at maximising construction efficiency as well as bringing the prodigal CD4 back into alignment as a C2 Plus.

 

There is a problem with Ford’s American manufacturing particularly with flexibility, their engineers and managers are blown away by plants that can build up to seven different vehicles, I think Ford US has lost the depth of knowledge, lots of short term hires that don’t see the bigger picture than their immediate task.

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1 minute ago, jpd80 said:

Exactly

This is not an all new design but a clever evolution of Escape/Kuga to move it in the right direction. The work on C2 was done by Ford Europe and aimed at maximising construction efficiency as well as bringing the prodigal CD4 back into alignment as a C2 Plus.

 

There is a problem with Ford’s American manufacturing particularly with flexibility, their engineers and managers are blown away by plants that can build up to seven different vehicles, I think Ford US has lost the depth of knowledge, lots of short term hires that don’t see the bigger picture than their immediate task.

 

I think that's because for decades North America had a dedicated plant for pretty much every vehicle. Europe never had that so they had to force themselves to learn to build multiple cars on one line. It's only since the end of The Way Forward when they closed all of those US plants did Ford NA have to force themselves to learn how to do that. 

 

Fun fact: prior to the 2015 UAW contract there was a clause that made the Valencia plant the model for how US plants should ideally operate. It was removed because it didn't really make a difference. 

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17 hours ago, jpd80 said:

Exactly

This is not an all new design but a clever evolution of Escape/Kuga to move it in the right direction. The work on C2 was done by Ford Europe and aimed at maximising construction efficiency as well as bringing the prodigal CD4 back into alignment as a C2 Plus.

 

There is a problem with Ford’s American manufacturing particularly with flexibility, their engineers and managers are blown away by plants that can build up to seven different vehicles, I think Ford US has lost the depth of knowledge, lots of short term hires that don’t see the bigger picture than their immediate task.

And that is a huge problem.  I don't dislike Hackett, but when I look at his background, that is why i've always felt he wasn't the guy for the job.  Brilliant ethereal thinker?  I guess he is and that is what hooked Bill Ford on the idea he can do anything.

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2 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

And that is a huge problem.  I don't dislike Hackett, but when I look at his background, that is why i've always felt he wasn't the guy for the job.  Brilliant ethereal thinker?  I guess he is and that is what hooked Bill Ford on the idea he can do anything.

I see a lot of similarities between Hackett and Nasser’s diversity strategies to diversity Ford’s income stream away from its traditional core business.

 

Back then F Series and Explorer were the two cash cows covering everything else as it probably still is today. Nasser’s desire was to develop a new income stream with Performance Auto Group that was the size of Ford Europe - this seems eerily similar to Hackett’s embrace of electrification, connectivity and autonomous vehicles. The even bigger similarity is the billions being spent in the hope of an even bigger pay off in the future.

 

Both CEOs realised that if they didn’t change direction, then competitors would eventually catch Ford and take sales and profit from it.

 

the game is set and pieces in play.

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2 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

And that is a huge problem.  I don't dislike Hackett, but when I look at his background, that is why i've always felt he wasn't the guy for the job.  Brilliant ethereal thinker?  I guess he is and that is what hooked Bill Ford on the idea he can do anything.

 

You don't need to understand the nuts and bolts of the car business to be a good CEO.  You need to hire the right management team and change the business processes and creative mindsets.

 

Changing the way new products are developed and approved is a big step in the right direction.   The focus on higher profit margins has allowed the designers and engineers to design and build better vehicles faster.  They're not just doing the same old things and trying to squeeze out tiny profits on commodity vehicles.   Look at how Mach-E changed just because Hackett and Farley gave them the green light and marching orders.   Changing the product development process and mindset is probably the best thing he's done to date and that helps no matter what you're building.

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1 hour ago, akirby said:

Changing the way new products are developed and approved is a big step in the right direction.   The focus on higher profit margins has allowed the designers and engineers to design and build better vehicles faster.  They're not just doing the same old things and trying to squeeze out tiny profits on commodity vehicles.   Look at how Mach-E changed just because Hackett and Farley gave them the green light and marching orders.   Changing the product development process and mindset is probably the best thing he's done to date and that helps no matter what you're building.

 

This article in Ward's by John McElroy is right to your point.  I suspect we'll all be talking about EPLM's very soon.

 

"While Hackett’s tenure has been panned by the media and Wall Street for posting weak earnings and watching Ford’s stock price sink, he got the company to change the way it develops new products, and how it manages those products. He introduced an approach that Ford calls customer-centric design, which is part of a larger process called EPLM, or Enterprise Product Line Management.  

 

The EPLM process is spreading throughout Ford globally. Every major product line has its own EPLM team, which is a cross-functional, co-located group that has full profit-and-loss responsibility for their product. Moreover, they must manage it from Job One to end of production.  This likely will change product decisions. If you are responsible for a vehicle until it goes out of production, you’ll be a lot more careful to make sure it retains its residual value and isn’t plagued by warranty costs. That’s going to drive different sourcing and content decisions and the winners will be the customers.  I am still learning about the EPLM process and it will be worth another column another day. But it’s impressive to see how quickly the company embraced this new approach. Moreover, talk to anyone on these teams and you will find they are energized and excited about what they’re doing."

 

https://www.wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/important-story-behind-ford-s-electric-mustang

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1 hour ago, akirby said:

 

You don't need to understand the nuts and bolts of the car business to be a good CEO.  You need to hire the right management team and change the business processes and creative mindsets.

 

Well said akirby sir. For Ford in particular, it's better for the CEO to not be a "nuts and bolts of the car business" kind of person. An outsider's perspective is essential in making organizational changes to get Ford fit again.

 

Alan Mulally demonstrated that more than a decade ago. Hackett is demonstrating it now.

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Had not heard about EPLM but that's exciting and exactly the type of change Ford needs.  Holding all the team members responsible for the lifecycle of the product including warranty costs along with mandating higher profit margins should drive better business decisions and result in better products.

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3 minutes ago, akirby said:

Had not heard about EPLM but that's exciting and exactly the type of change Ford needs.  Holding all the team members responsible for the lifecycle of the product including warranty costs along with mandating higher profit margins should drive better business decisions and result in better products.

 

I mean, I totally get that - if I'm understanding it correctly, it sounds like they're basically making each product a group's "baby" in that they're responsible for it, rather than just finishing a task, and moving onto the next without a care for the previous one.

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